Extracting honey from my original flow-super and finishing off the honey harvesting season.
This video shows what happens when you leak honey from the back of your flowhive super. The bees quickly discover where you're getting the honey from and your tranquil coffee sipping honey extraction moment becomes a game of getting the flow-tubes in faster than the bees can get in your way.
ReCap Mason Jar Lids saved my honey from being impregnated by bees and wasps. The lid holes are perfectly sized for the flowhive tubes and therefore can do a great job of keeping the honeybees out while the honey goes in your jars.
The big surprise for me, was that the flowframes had more than 1/2 gallon of honey in them! I needed to swap jars mid-drip and that's when I was "visited" by hundreds of honey hungry bees and wasps.
Honey ran down the back and the bees began their cleanup on every sweetened surface.
I did three extraction cycles this year, so overall, we had a great year and no profound honeybee losses.
Next, I'll go back when the weather warms up a tad, and will remove ALL of the Flow-Supers. They will be staged outside, 100 feet to the west of the apiary so honey remnants can be claimed and delivered to various hives. I will do this with all of the Flow-Supers at one time.
After the clean up is complete, the Flow-Supers will be put into winter storage. As the frames are plastic, we haven't had any problems with wax moths/wax worms taking over as they often do with inadequately stored wax drawn frames.
Each Flow-Hive has a deep brood box and medium or deep honey super on for winter. Those will not be harvested, but will remain for wintering resources.
The Flow-Supers are stored on open racks in my bee-house and will be replaced on the hives in spring, after the bees build back up and restore their honey-supers (at least one medium or deep honey box).
Here is my video on how to get your FlowHive through Cold Winters: • Do Flow Hives Work in ...
That's it! I hope everyone has healthy bees and will enjoy a winter of maximum survival!
One colony is being fed and that's because it was a late season swarm. It's built up very fast and is doing remarkably well.
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